How not to handle a scandal

When confronted with its worst scandal in decades, the IRS broke virtually every public relations rule on the books.

The agency could have first informed Congress that it was improperly targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. It could have issued a comprehensive press release. It could have even leaked to a friendly media outlet to get out in front of the story.

Crisis managers can only cringe at the fallout that’s sent President Barack Obama into a defensive tailspin and his team scrambling to manage the fallout. The scandal would be tough to confront in the best of circumstances, but the agency’s poor management of the story is being blamed for deepening the sense of crisis gripping Washington.

“If it’s a minor league team, it’d be below single A. And you’re insulting the minor leagues,” said Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton who guided the administration through a series of second-term campaign finance scandals.

Davis called the decision by Lois Lerner, the director of the agency’s nonprofit division who orchestrated the Q&A during an American Bar Association conference, an exercise in “upside down crisis management.”

“Now this looks doubly manipulative — fake and you have a bad story,” he said.

Members of the ABA told POLITICO they were blindsided that their public forum — normally a place for polite questions for government staffers — ended up being used to air some of the IRS’s dirtiest laundry.

“We had no indication at all,” said Suzanne Ross McDowell, the chair of the ABA group on tax exemptions. “People were totally surprised by the question and even more surprised by the answer. IRS officials know how to deflect questions they don’t want to answer.”

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that his press shop didn’t have any role in the planted question that’s upended the Washington political debate and threatens to stymie the president’s second-term agenda.

“As you’ve seen, we didn’t know it was coming and when it was reported on that Friday, that’s how the president found out about it and some of us found about it. So, no, we weren’t involved,” he said.

Carney didn’t directly address another question later in his briefing when asked if the White House approved of the way the IRS’s practices were disclosed at the ABA conference. “I don’t know any more about it than what I read in the paper,” he said.